


of dogs and wolves

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - World War I, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dehumanization, Horror, M/M, Open to Interpretation, Physical Disability, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 19:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30127953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: Maul arrives in town the day they're burying Rex's brother. Rex believes that his brother is not dead.
Relationships: Darth Maul & CT-7567 | Rex, Darth Maul/CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14
Collections: Well Gives Wives





	of dogs and wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [svartalfheimr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/svartalfheimr/gifts).



> this got long and it's weird and idek. i hope you like it!!!!!!!!! i described it the other day as a story where each character thinks they belong in a different genre and it still applies: maul thinks he's the main character of a mike mignola comic; rex thinks he's in a angela carter short story. 
> 
> also! the link to the playlist is [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3pOpR93FGGHClO3NwtqIs4?si=z9zBsNULQn6dJpC9XmG6FA)

> you can look God in the eyes  
> from your hollow in   
> the earth,  
> & hunt something  
> you have a hope of killing.

Yves Olade, “Hunter’s Moon”

The mountains crowd the little town. The black mass of the forest peeks over the roofs, the lonely church spire sharp and pale against the cold morning air.

Maul stops in the middle of the road. He leans on his cane and narrows his eyes against the glare of the sun. It’s a white, frigid day: the sky is a mass of pale, dense clouds, and it is so cold that he’s shivering under his heavy coat. Maul scratches under his mask.

The town is an ugly little place. It is at the bottom of a deep valley, surrounded by granite peaks forever covered in snow. There is a big manor house on a hill close by, surrounded by an enormous park and separated from the road by a tall stone wall.

Maul has had bad experiences in towns like this one. But he is running out of money, and it is cold, and it’s winter, and. Well. He scowls, tugs up the strap of his bag over his right shoulder and keeps walking, his cane sinking into the half-frozen mud.

The woods begin to the west of the town. A black mass of dark trees, tall and stern. There are patches of snow on the ground, but in some places the bush is so thick and the trees grow so close it’s just dark and moist. Maul breathes in deeply: he can smell wet earth, clean snow, the sweet-spicy aroma of pine needles.

The town is empty. There is no one on the streets. Wisps of dark smoke ascend from its roofs, but there is no one on its streets. Maul frowns. He checks his gun at his hip where it is hidden under his coat, and for a while he just looks. He is on what may be the town’s main street, steep and muddy and twisted. At the top he can see the church, a small grey building that presides over a small grey square.

And there is no much else: houses, small, its windows dark. A couple shops, its doors locked closed.

The church bells begin ringing. The main door opens and people wearing dark clothes and darker expressions come out. One of them sees Maul, and soon enough all of them are glancing at him, a familiar mix of suspicion and pity in their eyes. He does not move.

A funeral. Maul waits there, on the main square, leaning against the dry fountain, until the last person exits the church. Most of them have disappeared inside the nearby pub—there is sound and light coming out of the place, and. Well.

Usually it would be the first place where he would go in search of a job, of a warm meal. But after a year of rattling around the country Maul has learned to read people, and he knows he will not be welcomed there. Not today.

“You’ve chosen the worst day to come here,” someone says at his back. Maul tenses. He grips his cane harder and turns. A man. Young, short but broad-shouldered. He looks tired. His dark eyes are warm, and he looks at Maul, at his masked face and the eyes that can barely be seen beneath, without flinching.

“Why is that?” Maul asks.

The stranger nods at the church. “The funeral, of course.”

For a beat, Maul just stares at the man. He looks as if he had just come from the fields. He is wearing work clothes, mud-splattered and rough. A shock of blond hair can be seen from under his cap.

There is a big hunting rifle hanging from his shoulder. He handles it like he knows how to use it.

“Was it someone you knew?” Maul asks. “My condolences.”

The man blinks at him. Suddenly, he laughs. Just once, loud and hoarse. Maul scowls under his mask, the scars stretching painfully. The man is not laughing at him.

But it is not a nice laugh.

“Oh, yes,” the man says. He smiles, twisted and bitter. “My brother’s.”

*

The man lives in a small house in the outskirts of the town. The place is tiny and humble but clean. Maul’s host leaves his dirty boots and his coat and his gun by the door and then crosses the room to the chimney. There are embers there, shining red in the dark.

Maul looks around himself. He does not take off his coat or let go of his bag or his cane. They are in a square room that appears to be a mix of kitchen and common room. There is a bookshelf chock full of books by the corner, a big reading chair next to it, a rough table on the other side of the room with three equally rough chairs tucked under. It is cluttered: next to the stove there is a big metal bucket full of soaking clothes, and the pegs next to the door are full.

There are another two doors coming out of the room. Both of them are closed. The area smells of woodsmoke and beeswax and old books and something sweet that might be cinamon.

“You can sit whenever, stranger,” the man says. He wears his yellow hair very short. Maul wonders why.

He scowls.

His bad leg hurts. He leans his cane against the door and drops the bag next to it. Afterwards he takes off his coat and drapes it over the bag. He grabs his cane again and sits down on one of the chairs but does not take off his boots. He does not let go of his gun either.

The stranger—his host—eyes the weapon but does not say anything about it.

“I hope you like coffee,” is what he says instead. “What’s your name, stranger?”

Maul blinks. He takes off his gloves and tucks them in his pocket. His hands hurt, the scars shiny and red over his knuckles. He lays them on the table.

“Coffee is fine. Thank you,” Maul replies. He looks down at his hands and then at his host. “You may call me Maul.”

The man stops what he is doing to look at him, his eyebrows raised. He looks—shifty. That is the word. Tired and anxious and shivery. Maul tilts his head at him, and the man looks away.

“That’s a strange name.”

“It’s mine.”

The man hums. If he notices Maul’s tone—and something tells him the man does—he chooses to ignore it.

“I’m Rex.”

He places a tin cup full of dark coffee in front of Maul. It smells cheap, but it feels warm against his cold hands. Maul cradles it with his palms and looks at Rex. Rex stares back at him. His dark eyes flit over the mask. It stops right over Maul’s mouth, and he knows a patch of red, abraded skin can be seen under the pale and dirty leather.

“The war?” Rex asks. He sits down on his chair.

Maul nods. “The war.”

Rex raises his left hand. There’s a wide, long scar across his left palm. It disappears under his shirt. While Maul looks, his index finger twitches. “I was down south. Gallipoli.”

He swallows. Looks away, down at his coffee. “My brother was, too.”

Maul takes a careful sip. It burns his tongue and it is bitter, over brewed. It is the best thing he has had in weeks.

“I was not,” he answers.

For a while they just drink in silence. The wind howls against the windows, the fire crackles and burns in the chimney, and Rex does not look him in the eye.

Maul places his mug on the table very carefully. He clasps his hands and leans his elbows on the wood and then stares at his host.

He is human. He is young, and he is handsome, and he keeps secrets—but he is human. Maul tilts his head. He wonders if he should grab his bag and thank him for the coffee and keep walking.

Maul may be looking for trouble, but the trouble he is after is not Rex’s kind. Not anymore.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” Rex suddenly says.

Maul sniffs.

“That is my business,” he replies. Rex scoffs. He crosses his arms and leans back on his chair. It creaks and he startles, scowls. His ears are red.

“It’s me you’re looking at,” he says impatiently. “That makes it my business.”

Maul tilts his head, conceding the point. He does not answer.

“Why did you invite me in?” he asks after a beat.

“You looked lost and cold. I fought in the war. I know I was lucky.”

That doesn’t sound like it is a lie—Maul narrows his eyes at him. His face itches under the mask. He clasps his hands harder.

“I was not lost.”

Rex scoffs again. “There’s nothing here,” he replies. He sounds bitter. “Only trees and cold.”

“Maybe that is what I am looking for.”

“Then you’re in the right place.”

“I know.” Maul waits for a beat. “Why were you not at your brother’s funeral?”

Rex looks him in the eye. He does not look away. “He isn’t dead.”

Maul raises his eyebrows behind his mask.

“Where is he, then?”

“Lost.”

There is a story there. Maul feels himself lean over the table. This might be why the dreams brought him here.

“Lost?”

“In the woods.”

*

There are two rooms in the house. When night falls Rex points Maul to the chair after feeding him bread and cheese and more coffee and then disappears through one of them. Maul waits until he cannot hear any sound coming from the other side of the door and then, carefully, takes off his mask in the dark. He lays it down on one of his knees. His bad leg hurts, but he is used to it. Maul ignores the familiar tightness while he rubs pomade on the scars of his face.

He was lucky to keep his nose and both of his eyes. He knows that. He has seen the faces of those not as lucky as he was. He watched them burn while himself gasped and yelled and cried in the flames.

He puts on his mask once he is done. He takes off his boots and stands carefully from the chair. His knee attempts to buckle, but Maul grits his teeth until they hurt. He takes a step. Then another.

The teeth crushed his femur and part of the joint. He almost bled out. The wound got infected—they attempted to take his leg, but he would not let them. He did not sleep for days, watchful.

Maul stands in the center of the little room. The wind howls against the windows, against the shingles on the roof. He can hear the far away rustling of the trees in the forest, a bird calling, high and mournful.

The door to the room is not locked. It opens when Maul pushes the wood with his fingertips, and it moves on well-greased hinges without a sound. The room beyond is dark. There is a window, small and square, right over the bed. The moon—not full but close—paints the mattress silver and does its best to illuminate the rest.

There are books on the bedside table, a candle. A pair of work boots next to the bed, a jacket hanging from the peg next to the door, a wardrobe, one of its doors still half open. A thin layer of dust covers everything, and the air smells closed and musty under the woodsmoke.

The bed is unmade. Maul crosses the small room and touches the white sheets. They are damp and cold. The pillow is askew, and Maul’s hand twitches.

Something creaks at his back. Maul straightens. He closes the room and exits through the door and closes it at his back. He waits there, in the living room, for a beat. He blinks in the sudden, deeper darkness, and waits for another creak, a whisper, the clicking off of a gun safety.

He hears nothing. Maul swallows. His throat clicks, and the noise echoes. Suddenly he feels very alone.

He crosses the room towards Rex’s door. He stops there for a beat, his hand over the handle. When he turns it he finds it unlocked.

Stupid.

Maul pushes the door.

The room is very similar to the one he just left behind. A bed, a window, a wardrobe, a bedside table. Boots and books and a sweater, thrown over the bed.

And Rex, asleep, a slowly breathing lump under the blankets. Yellow hair over the pale pillow, an outstretched hand hanging from the mattress.

The window is open. It is just a creak, but cold wind sweeps inside the room. It smells cold and clean and Maul shivers.

Maul leaves the bedroom. He sits on the chair and massages his knee. He is tired—he doubts he will sleep. The night feels full of promise.

He does.

*

The little cemetery surrounds the back of the church. The wind is so cold it cuts; Maul holds onto his cane and keeps walking, hunched against the gusts. He is frozen to the bone, and it is so early the sun is still not out—but he wants to see.

He did not see anyone else on the way there. When he woke up his host was still asleep—Maul could hear him breathing. He grabbed his things and then left. He hurts—that chair was not kind to his leg, to his back—but he is rested. And he is used to the pain.

The hunger will be a problem sooner rather than later, but for now Maul has something to do. Something else.

He dreamed. He always does: he sees the war, the flames, the hospital, his life before. Those dreams do not count.

The dream he dreamed last night was one of the dreams he has begun to consider the real ones. It showed him the graveyard. It held his hand in a cold, dry grip and took him to the grave. It will be under a dead tree. No granite tombstone—just a plank of wood over moist, dark dirt.

The graveyard is tiny. Maul finds it in minutes. It is as he saw it in his dreams. It is the most recent grave in the place. He reads the name, the dates. It does not say much else.

It feels fake. Maul does not know what has happened—only that someone or something was buried yesterday, and that Rex—his host—says it is not his brother.

Maul looks at the wet earth. He digs in with his cane and turns it over. He wishes, morbidly, it was still last night. Last night, a good leg and a shovel.

He should move on. His dreams may have taken him there but he cannot find whatever they thought he should find.

Maul has seen many wonderful and horrible things. First in his sleep and afterwards, his eyes wide open. Little girls that are wolves, fountains that spout blood, a sheep with human teeth. He killed an old woman without a face two weeks ago in a shack by the sea. She stank of brine and rotting fish and her hands were not hands but claws. One of her nails almost gutted him but he blew her head off and afterwards burned her in her house.

He does not know what he is supposed to find. He does not think he wants to. He knows he will, sooner or later: this, Maul does not doubt.

In his most bitter moments he thinks it will be the thing that tried to eat him alive. It gave him the dreams, put them into his head. Maybe, Maul thinks, once he finds it and kills it he will be free. Maybe he will get back his face and his leg and everything else.

*

The pub is warm and almost empty. People have gone back to their jobs, to their lives. The bartender looks Maul up and down. His eyes find the mask, the cane, and flutter away, uncomfortable. He does not say anything to him and lets him take a seat in the corner and when Maul asks for his food he does not even ask him if he has the money to pay it.

Maul has—but it is not much. And sooner rather than later it will run out. The past year and a half has been a never ending dance with violence and starvation.

It is early, but the bartender serves him some stew. It is warm and it is good and Maul is able to eat his fill. When he pays for his food, the man’s expression changes. Suddenly he looks at Maul and sees not a wraith or a broken man or a stray but an old soldier, down on his luck.

He tries to talk at him—Maul ignores him until he goes away.

The door to the pub opens. The noise cuts off. Maul raises his head from his food and looks: Rex is there. He looks well. Tired. His nose is red and when his eyes find Maul he smiles.

The bartender tenses—so does the only other patron, an older gentleman who has been drinking non-stop for the better part of an hour. They look at Rex and away, at Rex and away. He scares them, or they pity him.

Rex is aware of this—Maul sees it in the wry curl to his mouth. He ignores them and crosses the room.

“So here’s where you are,” he tells Maul. He sounds—familiar. He sounds relieved. “Thought you would have left.”

“Why?”

“You were gone when I woke up.”

Maul blinks at him. Rex sighs. Maul narrows his eyes.

“I went to see your brother’s grave,” he tells Rex.

Rex scowls. Soon enough he manages to clear out his face of the expression, but for an instant his eyes shine darkly.

“Why?” he asks. An echo or a copy.

The bartender watches them from the other side of the bar. He looks shaken.

“I wanted to see what the grave of a missing man looks like,” Maul answers honestly.

Rex crosses his arms. His dark eyes are flat and unreadable. Suddenly Maul is hit with the certainty that he is a dangerous man.

He has met many dangerous men in his travels. Most of them he could see coming: dangerous men turn their sharpness and their edges into jobs and careers, fan the flames and water the seeds of violence and ruthlessness so that everyone sees them for what they are.

Not Rex. Rex looks kind. Rex may be kind. Rex looks like he knows how to use the guns he keeps in his house, in the house he used to share with his missing brother.

He is like one of those guns. A well-kept and discreet weapon. Put away and kept in a drawer or on the wall until it is time to kill someone.

Maul looks at him and Rex stares back. Maul wonders: what does he see? Another man? A broken vet? A mad vagrant, a stray, a hobo, a cripple? Or another gun?

“I could show you the last place where I saw him,” Rex says. Maul blinks. He was not expecting that.

“Why would you show me that?” Maul asks him. Rex does not smile. From the corner of his eye Maul watches the man behind the counter pale further and make as if he were thinking about coming closer.

Rex turns to look at him—the man freezes. Looks away.

They fear him. They fear Rex. They know something Maul does not.

Maul stands up from his seat. His leg hurts. He massages the muscle and grabs his cane and his bag.

“Very well,” he says.

Rex smiles.

*

They leave Maul’s things back in Rex’s house. Maul takes his cane, his gun, his knife and himself. Afterwards they begin walking towards the woods beyond the town. The closer they get the bigger they look. Maul inhales and lets their smell fill his lungs. They are dark and they are cold—they smell of green, sleeping things.

Rex looks at Maul and away. He keeps his steps long and slow. Maul knows he is doing it on purpose. It is humiliating but by now he is used to it and he tries to ignore it the best he can. The mud from the road sucks at his cane, at his boots. His hips hurt and so does his leg and his back—he ignores them too. By now, pain is as much a part of him as his eyes or his scars or his mask or his lungs or his cane or his knife. Maul no longer remembers how it was to live without it: he is now a thing of pain and vengeance and hunger, and he knows he should care. But he does not. He does not miss the person he used to be: Maul does not remember him.

“Careful with your step,” Rex says. He ducks under a low branch—Maul copies him. “Step where I step and keep to the path. It’s easy to get lost here.”

“Your brother got lost,” Maul says. It is not a question.

Rex scoffs. “Cody knows these woods better than anyone. He isn’t lost.”

Maul stares at the back of Rex’s head. He is wearing a cap, old and ratty and pulled low over his eyes. The tips of his ears are red.

“You told me he was.”

Rex does not trip, but Maul watches him slow down before he picks up the rhythm again. He puts a few meters between them. Maul raises an eyebrow and snorts.

“You are not a very good liar, are you?” he says, raising his voice.

Rex does not answer.

They keep walking. They do not see anyone else. Maul can hear birds and animals under the brush. The pines are tall and wide. Some of them have been cut recently, and the air smells of resine and wet, tender wood. Their branches curve over their heads high up and black against the pale winter sky. The air is so dry and so cold it cuts.

“Here,” Rex suddenly says. Maul stops by his side and leans on his cane. He catches his breath while he looks.

A clearing. Logging site.

Maul glances at Rex—Rex blinks twice, half-smiles and nods. He gestures with the hand not holding onto his rifle, as if to say: go on. Look your fill.

Maul sniffs. He takes a step. Another. There are abandoned tools. Saws. Wheelbarrows. Tack and a harness. A log, ready for transport. A half-frozen sweater. Maul brushes it with a gloved hand and something skitters from underneath. A mouse, maybe.

“How long has been your brother gone?” he asks.

Rex has not moved from the path. When Maul looks back at him, he sees Rex leaning against a tree, looking perfectly at ease. He seems to belong to this place: to the pines and the black dirt and the white sky.

“Why?”

Maul scowls. He likes asking that. He stares at Rex impatiently until the man rolls his eyes. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“A couple weeks. Bit more,” he says. He looks away, down to the ground. “Why?”

Maul turns back to the clearing. He closes his eyes and breathes in.

It smells as it did in his dreams. But he still does not know what he is meant to find.

He still does not know what his dreams want him to kill.

Something cracks. A branch. The leaves on the ground. Maul opens his eyes and slips his free hand under his coat. At his back, he hears Rex mutter something.

“There are wolves here,” Rex says. “It’s been a tough winter. They’re hungry.”

Maul returns to the path. Rex has his rifle against his shoulder, his posture easy and confident. A hunter—and a good one.

“Did they eat your brother?” Maul asks him. Rex twitches. He scowls down the rifle. Maul looks at him and waits. He knows he is playing with fire, but he is not afraid.

“Let’s go back,” Rex replies after a beat. “It’ll get dark soon.”

They do. And it does.

*

They return to Rex’s little house. Rex makes them dinner—stew; it is good; he is a good cook—and afterwards he slips into his bedroom and leaves Maul to sleep in the chair.

The room is cold. Maul sits down and massages his bad leg and looks around himself. He feels sleepy and warm under his coat, under his borrowed blanket. He does not understand why Rex let him stay there for a second night—he knows the man wants something, but he cannot seem to guess what it is.

He is a mystery: Maul does not like mysteries. Mysteries kill you. Mysteries have teeth and claws and they keep them hidden until it is time to use them.

Maul scowls at the darkness. He is tired but sleep feels far away. That is inconvenient: he needs to rest. And he needs to dream. His dreams never steer him wrong—they are the only thing he can trust in this world of riddles and secrets and things hiding in the dark.

Something cracks in Rex’s bedroom. Maul stands up from the chair. He leaves his cane and limps towards the door. He stops there, his hand over the handle and his face close to the wood. He has forgotten his mask. Maul pauses, things about returning, about forgetting about this—he does not.

The door opens with silent hinges. Maul blinks at the darkness, waits patiently while his eyes get used to it. The room looks as it did the previous day: small, quiet, not too messy. Lived in and warm.

(He has never lived in a place such as this. Jealousy is not practical or useful: Maul kills its flames.)

The window hangs open in the night. A cold gust of wind slips inside—Maul shivers, and Rex sits up. He is awake when he looks at Maul.

“I heard a noise,” Maul says. He nods to the window.

Rex blinks at him. The moon floods the room. He looks rumpled and alert at the same time—not soft. Maul does not think he is the kind of man who knows softness.

His eyes find Maul’s face; he lets Rex look. He leans on the door jamb and shifts his weight off his bad leg. It hurts. During the day it is easier to ignore, how badly it hurts, but the nights—the nights make him wish he had let them take it.

“Shit,” Rex says. He looks away and repeats it to the window. He kneels on his bed and pulls it closed. “Sorry. It—the latches are old. The house is old.”

It is not a lie. The house is old—it creaks and shudders against the wind.

But it is well kept. And it is clean. And Maul has seen how careful and methodical Rex is—with his guns and with his home and with his words.

If the window keeps opening by itself is because he wants it to.

Which brings them back to Maul. His host is clever. His host is not unkind or ungenerous—but he is not careless either.

Maul returns to the main room. He sits on the chair. He does not put on his mask. He thinks and finally, a few hours before dawn, he falls asleep.

In his dream he is back in the logging camp. He is alone. He has his gun but he has lost his cane and his mask.

(He has _lost_ them: later, when he wakes, he will remember this: he will know it is important.)

There is something just beyond the trees. It is day and the sky is white and heavy with snow, but the wind is quiet and Maul can hear something move just beyond the trees that surround the clearing. It is light on its feet, on its claws, but Maul’s sense of hearing is sharper than most, and when he dreams it gets better.

He cocks his gun and waits. That is what he is there to do: wait, gun in his hand.

A man steps out from between the trees. He is bareheaded and barefoot. Maul cannot see his face. His hair is dark. He has no hands.

In the dream, Maul raises his guns and takes his shot—it hits the man’s chest but he does not fall. He cocks his head.

Maul wakes himself up. His heart is beating very fast, very hard. His leg, his hip—they hurt so much he does not think he will be able to move from the chair. He tries—he whines. He curls over himself and curses himself.

A warm hand pushes him back. Maul blinks, still half-asleep. He looks up at Rex—he looks sorry. He looks tired.

“Wait here,” he says. Maul blinks up at him. “I’ll fix you up a bath. It— it will help. I’m sorry.”

Sorry? What for?

Maul needs his mask. Where is it? He cannot find it.

He is still looking for it when Rex returns. By then it is morning, and the blue light from dawn has turned white and harsh. Maul has not been able to stand up from the chair. His cane is too far away, and he has forced his body to bear more than it can.

Now he is paying the price.

There is a small bathhouse a few meters away from the cabin. It looks as old as the house, and Rex helps Maul reach it, his arm around Maul’s waist, both of them quiet. Maul because he hurts too much. Rex’s silence stinks of guilt.

There is a tin tub in the bathhouse. It is full, full of hot water. Maul blinks down at it—he cannot remember the last time he took a bath. He keeps quiet while Rex helps him undress. He leaves Maul’s gun on the bench and does not comment on it, but Maul is aware of the way he looks at it, of the way Rex’s eyes return afterwards to his body, scarred and too thin as it is.

“Was that a wolf?” Rex asks. Maul does not need to look to know what he means.

He shakes his head. “No. It was not a wolf.”

Or a dog. It was darkness given teeth. It stank of death and rot and sulphur. He knows his bullet hit it, because its blood sprayed him and it burnt worse than the flames.

“That must have been a big dog,” Rex says. Maul shrugs off his undershirt and lets it drop on the bench. He shivers.

“It was not a dog,” he answers.

Rex has to hold him up and place him inside the tub—Maul cannot lift his legs enough to step inside. It is humiliating—he makes it look easy. And Maul is too thin, and he is not a big man, never was and never will be. But he knows he is heavy.

The thought flees his mind once his legs are under hot water. Maul gasps, sighs. He leans against the tub and feels something give, feels his muscles begin to unlock. He should use the chance to wash himself, to get properly clean for the first time in months—he does not.

He expects Rex to leave. He does not. The man sits down on the bench next to Maul’s clothes—next to his gun—and stretches out his legs.

“What was it, then?” he insists. “If it wasn’t a dog or a wolf.”

Maul stares at him unblinking for a beat. Rex does not look away.

“I do not know,” Maul says after a while. He closes his eyes. Leans his head against the tub. His face itches, but he forces his hand to stay where they are, hanging over the edge. “It was dark. I shot it. It did not die.”

Rex hums. Maul glances at him—he has closed his eyes. He looks comfortable there, on the bench. He has taken off his sweater and rolled up his sleeves, and the wide, white scar on his forearm looks spectral in the low light that filters through the bathhouse’s only window.

Maul wonders: what did he see in the war?

There were angels in France. The British said they had seen Saint George. They spoke of golden figures and shining shields. Maul never saw any of those things—he found no saviours in the war, only teeth and flame—but he is inclined to believe they are real. The world is much stranger than most men know. Stranger and terrible and beautiful.

Rex folds his legs and leans towards Maul, his elbows on his knees. Maul watches him watching Maul—he is staring at the ruin that was once his face.

“Your eyes,” Rex says. “They are—are they from—?”

“They used to be brown,” Maul says.

The doctors could never tell him why they are not anymore.

He never insisted—he does not care. They are Maul’s. They work. That is more than enough.

Maul turns to look at Rex. Rex is staring at him. At the scars and at his yellow eyes and at his hands and his shoulders. Maul wants to look away—he does not. He scowls. Tilts his head.

“What do you want from me?” he asks Rex.

Rex blinks. He looks away. There is a blush crawling up his neck, but his dark eyes are clouded. Unreadable and guilty. He looks back at Maul with an obvious effort.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he answers. It is not, technically speaking, a lie: this, Maul knows. Rex does not want anything from him.

But he wants something. And it involves Maul.

Maul tilts his head the other way. He keeps quiet and keeps watching. Rex is growing more uncomfortable, but he is stubborn. He does not move. He does not leave. He stares back, licks and then chews his lower lip. They are dry and chapped.

“You are a liar,” Maul says quietly. Just to see what happens.

What happens is that Rex scowls, black and sudden. He stands up. He stays where he is but he scowls down at Maul, and for an instant he thinks Rex is going to say something awful. Something interesting. Something true.

But the anger burns out, and he deflates, and he sits down again and hangs his blond head.

Maul scoffs. He relaxes further. He is not a tall man, but the tub is not long enough to accommodate his legs. He winces, tries to stretch out—he hits the tin and water splashes on the stained wooden floor.

“You can sleep in my bed tonight,” Rex says. Maul pauses. “I will—I will sleep somewhere else.”

“I can leave,” Maul says. There is a church. They will let him sleep there—priests always do. He may not be religious, and they can always tell—but he looks too broken, too pitiful. There is always a bench with his name.

“It’s late,” Rex says, and it is not a lie, not at all, but he is such a bad liar that you can tell even when he is telling the truth. “Stay another day.”

Maul scowls. He opens his mouth: he is tired of this. He does not want to owe anything else to this man. Rex is faster.

“Please,” he says.

Maul shuts his mouth. He looks away.

He will stay.

Rex leaves for work. Or that is what he says: after helping Maul return to the house, he grabs his gun and his jacket and walks out again without looking back once, back tense and head held high. Maul walks out as well. He returns to the graveyard, to the missing man’s grave, and stays there, leaning on his cane.

It is a sad little thing. It is empty and pointless and it knows it.

When he returns it is already dark and Rex is waiting for him with a plate on the table full of soup. They eat dinner and afterwards he disappears in his brother’s room. Maul listens for a while, sitting in his chair.

He ends up going to Rex’s room. He sits on his bed, touches the blankets—they are cool and damp, but his brain keeps telling Maul they are not. They smell like Rex—gunsmoke, woodsmoke, green growing things, coffee—and when he lies on his back under them they feel smothering. He is warm and he is comfortable, but it has been so very long since the last time he was.

It makes him anxious—it is humiliating. He is like a stray dog, kicked one too many times—he does not know what to do with kindness. Maybe he never did. Or maybe he has forgotten—that is almost worse.

Maul keeps his gun close-by. He faces the door, his back to the wall and the window creaking over him. It does not close properly—he can feel the cold slipping in. Maul shivers, slides further under the blankets.

He does not want to fall asleep—he does. He dreams. But they are unimportant dreams: he sees the war and he sees the flames and he loses his face and then he is back home, Before, in the kitchen, with his brothers. They cannot see him but he does not mind—he does not mind being a ghost as long as he can keep them company.

*

The window opens. Maul opens his eyes in the dark. He grabs his gun and sits up, still half-asleep. He looks to his left—yes. The window. It hangs open, swinging in the wind. He scowls. The moon is out but hidden behind a thick, heavy cloud—its light flickers. There and gone. There and gone.

Maul listens closely: he can hear the wind howling through the trees, the house settling and creaking. He looks through the open window, and the cold hits his face, numbs the scars. Later they will hurt and burn like the first day.

Maul cocks his gun. The safety clicks off. He tilts his head—he can hear footsteps. The moon disappears: darkness falls. Maul grips his gun tighter and kneels on the bed, leans his weapon on the windowsill and waits. He is not afraid.

His blood sings: this is what the dreams want him to do.

The wind blows the clouds away. Moonlight floods the ground. Maul grins: there is a man a few meters from him.

He has a face, and hands, but Maul would recognise him anywhere.

“You are not Rex,” he says.

“No,” Maul replies.

He takes his shot.

It hits the man—he tumbles down—and then something hits his back, tears him out of the bed, and he hits the floor with a furious howl.

Rex kicks his gun from his hand and Maul growls, tries to scramble after it—his knee refuses to sustain his weight and he falls down, hits his face, hears his nose crunch.

The world fades away.

*

“That was my brother,” Rex says. His hands are warm and dry and firm on Maul’s face.

Maul wants to scoff—he does not.

Rex is careful when he sets his nose again. Maul fights against the temptation to lean his face against his palms and moves away. Rex lets him go. He approaches the sink and begins washing the blood from his hands.

It is very late. It is still dark outside, but Maul can hear birds singing. The main room of the house smells of coffee, blood, gunpowder. Rex has Maul’s gun stuck in the waist of his pajama pants, barely visible over his sweater. It pushes them down slightly, makes them sag—it will be very easy to steal it back.

“Maybe,” Maul says.

Rex can tell that he does not care, because he twists, scowling, turns back to him.

For a beat he just stares at Maul, white with rage. Maul stares back. He is sitting at the table, his right leg stretched under it. It hurts, but it is a dull, bearable sort of pain. The pounding on his head, on his nose distracts him and drowns everything else.

“Not maybe. He _is_ ,” Rex growls at him. Maul leans back against the back of the chair and looks at him in silence.

Maul thinks about the man. He looked human—he looked like Rex. Dark-haired and handsome. Maul knows he was not. He knows that Rex’s brother is no longer Rex’s or his brother anymore.

But Rex does not—and Maul could explain. Could tell him of the dreams, of the faceless, handless creature that prowls around his head when he closes his eyes.

He would not believe Maul. Nobody ever does.

“I did not kill him,” Maul tells him instead.

Rex swallows. He leans against the counter. He looks exhausted—he is and is not grieving. He is hanging on to hope with bloody fingers. It blinds him. He must love his brother very much.

Love is a curse, Maul has found. It obscures and it haunts.

“How do you know that?” Rex says. He swallows again and looks away. He blinks—his eyes are wet. His hands twitch, and Maul finds himself counting the steps that separate him from the rifle that hangs next to the door.

Maul pauses. He cocks his head and thinks for a second—he knows he is right, but he does not know why.

“I do not think I can,” he replies honestly.

Rex looks back at him. Hope and love, again. Maul pities him.

“I can help you,” he tells Rex. It is not a lie: Rex can tell. “What happened to him?

Rex swallows again. He does not believe Maul—or he does. Maybe he just does not trust him.

That is good. He should not.

(Hope and love, it is always those two things.)

Rex sits down on the other chair. He rubs at his face, at his hair. If the gun at his waist bothers him he does not act as if it does.

“How?” Rex says. He laughs. “You shot him.”

“Yes. I did not kill him.”

Rex stares at him over his clasped hands. He snorts. “You say that as if that proved anything at all.”

Maul tilts his head—that is true. It does not.

“But I can help you,” he repeats. “I want to.”

It is what I am here to do, Maul does not say: he does not think it is true. And even if he is: he knows he cannot explain the dreams. He cannot make them make sense. They just are. He believes them. He trusts them, even though he knows he should not.

Rex will not.

Rex just stares at Maul for long seconds, his lips pushed together. He clenches his jaws and looks away.

“He was with the men out in the logging camp,” he says. He swallows. “He had always—he liked working there. Had been acting weird for weeks, but he wouldn’t explain. I thought—he fought in the war. Almost lost an eye.”

Maul watches him. Rex is not looking at him—his gaze is very far away.

“One day he did not return. He just—vanished.” Rex swallows again. He stands up and paces up and down, stops at Maul’s back. Maul twists in his chair.

The gun. It is there. So close he can smell it, oil and gunpowder and hot metal.

“We sent out searching parties for a week. But it’s winter, and it was very cold, and then the wolves came down from the mountain. They stopped.”

Rex did not. He is shuddering, intermittent tremors that make his back twitch. He is curled onto himself, hugging his elbows, but his voice does not waver.

“And then one day he woke me up. He was—he was fine. Strange. But fine. He looks fine. He says he can’t come back.”

And then Rex shuts his mouth, and it is like a book snapping closed. Maul snarls mutely. He stands from the chair and places a hand on Rex’s shoulder. The material of his sweater is rough and scratches his palm.

It is weird, touching things without his gloves. The scars on the backs of his hands look grotesque against the wool—Maul watches the raw skin, red and cracked, fascinated.

Rex turns to look at him. It catches Maul by surprise, and he does not move his hand away quick enough. It stays there, in the crook between shoulder and neck, and then Rex is looking up at him, dark eyes troubled. He is a few inches shorter than Maul but solid. The muscle under his hand feels dense and heavy. Maul swallows. Moves away a step and reaches for his cane.

He made it himself. He used to own one. It was made of cheap pine. It was soft and it splintered and left the tender flesh of his palm full of wood.

Maul carried a piece of old, heavy oak around for months afterwards, the time it took to carve another one himself.

It is a heavy cane. Hard. Knotted and rough. It is his. The handle is molded to Maul’s hands—it has been designed by Maul with himself in mind.

He once broke a man’s head with it. He carries a bit of his blood with him since then. It soaked the wood and Maul never bothered trying to get it off.

“Why did they bury your brother?” Maul says. He turns to look at Rex. He is watching Maul, puzzled.

Rex shrugs. He looks away and back at Maul. He takes a step closer to him. Maul narrows his eyes at Rex but stands his ground.

“It’s been a month,” he says. He closes his mouth and sighs. “I’m going to make breakfast.”

Maul leaves him doing that. He puts on his coat and then slips his gun from Rex’s waist and ignores him when he squeaks at Maul, and then he turns away and opens the outside door.

It is very cold. Maul slips his gun in his coat pocket and then buttons it up.

The mask. Maul blinks. He has been maskless for hours. He did not even notice. He touches his face, the scars.

The house is in the outskirts of the town. There is no one around: it is early and the light is dim and Maul grips his cane harder and begins walking around the house.

*

Maul finds blood on the ground. The dirt is half-frozen and hard, and he only sees it after finding half a footprint. Naked foot, human-sized, perfectly common. Maul scowls down at it. He kneels with a grunt, his cane next to him on the ground, and touches the drop of blood. Not enough for a bullet wound—but if it is there it means Maul got him. He hums. It is dry, flaky. Rusty red. Maul tastes it—iron. Sweet and cold.

He looks up. He can see more footprints. They move towards the woods, dark and foreboding—of course they do.

Maul snorts.

He hears Rex at his back, and turns to look at him over his shoulder. Rex approaches him, offers him a hand; after a beat, Maul grabs his cane and accepts it. Rex helps him up, his hand very warm in Maul’s cold one. It is rough but Maul’s are rougher.

He is not wearing a coat or a jacket, just his woolen sweater. He stays close to Maul, shivering, hugging himself.

“What are you doing?” Maul asks him.

Rex snorts. “What are _you_ doing?” he repeats. “It’s cold as hell.”

Maul blinks down at him, unimpressed. “I am wearing my coat.”

Rex rolls his eyes. “Come back inside. I made coffee.”

Maul doesn’t move. He looks at Rex, shuddering under the wind and the cold. The man is looking at the woods, his face blank but his eyes full of longing.

“You are not worried,” Maul says.

Rex jumps. He turns to look at Maul. “What?”

“About your brother. I shot him. That is his blood.”

“You just grazed him,” Rex says. He turns back to the forest and falls quiet. He shakes himself after a while.

“Let’s go back. It’s cold,” Rex says.

And that is what they do. They go back inside. Maul drinks Rex’s coffee and eats his bread. He lets the man see his face and his scars. Lets him look, even if Rex never stares.

And when Rex grabs his gun and leaves, Maul follows behind him.

*

Rex goes to the woods. He does not look back and it is hard, following him, even if he never leaves the path. He moves fast, faster than he did when Maul went with him, and he never looks back.

Maul is not completely sure Rex does not know he is being followed. He is careful, yes—but Rex is too well attuned to his surroundings. He moves through the woods like he is part of them, like he knows them better than anything else. Maul frowns and keeps closer, his gun in its holster, and his heavy cane spearing the mud on the path.

It winds through the woods. Pines and oaks and others Maul does not know. And he does not know where it goes, where it ends. He does not know if it does at all. He just follows Rex, and he hurts and he is tired and daylight begins to fade and suddenly hours have passed and he is lost. Rex is gone. And when he looks back, the path is but a shadow in a world made of darkness.

Maul blinks. He keeps walking, limping, the mud sucking at his boots and the cold winter wind slapping at his face, cutting and dry. It smells green, and it feels like one of his dreams. Maul’s heart starts beating faster.

The path ends. It fades away. The pines drown it with their spindly trunks, like needles or teeths or the masts of a thousand tall ships. It is not quiet, but it feels like it is—Maul feels watched.

He takes out his gun, his hand trembling, excitement and cold and exhaustion but not fear. He has not been afraid since the day they tried to take his leg.

“I’m sorry.”

Maul startles. He twists, gun already raised. Rex is there, looking at him. He is carrying a lamp—Maul does not know how he did not see the light. He looks—soft and sad and broken.

“That’s how it works—if you stay he will be able to leave,” Rex says. He sounds desperate and guilty: this will haunt him forever.

Maul swallows. “He does not want to,” he tells Rex. He already knows it will be useless—Rex loves his brother and he wants him back and he has placed all his desperate hope on hearsay and old stories and what is left of his brother’s humanity.

Rex stares at him. He steps closer, the lamp held loosely in his left hand and his rifle hanging from his shoulder. When he grabs Maul’s chin his hand is very warm.

Rex kisses him, infinitely gentle. His lips are chapped and his mouth tastes of blood. When he blinks, his lashes brush Maul’s scars and he shivers.

“Maybe,” he says against Maul’s mouth. “But I have to try.”

Rex leaves. He takes his lamp with him. The light fades, disappears, and Maul is left alone in the dark. He has his gun and his cane and his dreams. The wind whistles and howls around him—the night smells cold.

Something cracks behind Maul. He breathes in—breathes out. He turns and lifts his gun and.


End file.
